Islam: a fraudulent ideology
There is nothing legitimate about Islam’s claim to be the original faith. Similarly, there is nothing legitimate about the Palestinian aspiration for nationhood.
The Islamic desire to eradicate the Jewish people can perhaps be explained by the following proposition: Muslims subconsciously recognize that Islam is an inferior and destructive imitation of Judaism.
Rather than seeking to emulate the goodness of the Torah, Muslims have instead subverted and sabotaged the Jewish faith, and this has had dire consequences for Jews.
The towering figures of the Tanakh, which include Adam, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Moses, Aaron and David, have all been claimed by Muslims to suit their own agenda. Indeed, Muslims downplay the importance of Isaac by claiming it was Ishmael who was taken up to Mount Moriah. Ishmael, of course, is considered to be the ancestor of the Arabs.
Examples of imitation abound. Islamic dietary laws mimic Kashrut. Muslims circumcise their children, just like Jews do. The Temple Mount, revered by Jews as the place where God chose to rest the Divine Presence, is now home to the Dome of the Rock, a caricature of the Jewish temple. And it is because of the Dome of the Rock that Jews are unable to build the Third Temple.
Muslims claim the Quran is the word of God recited by an angel to Mohammed, despite the fact that it is merely a mishmash of stories from both the Hebrew Bible and the Christian New Testament. The Torah, however, is revered by Jews because it was/is the ultimate manifestation of God’s will. And unlike the Quran, the Torah is the bedrock of Judeo-Christian civilisation.
Although the Christian New Testament does contain some anti-Judaic statements, the Quran is far worse. Islam is mired in anti-Semitism because of its ambiguous relationship with Judaism. Several verses in the Quran describe the transformation of Jews into apes and pigs as punishment for breaking the Sabbath or “worshipping evil.” Before ordering that every adult male of a particular Jewish tribe be killed, Mohammed referred to the Jews as “brothers of monkeys.” So it is no surprise that today’s Islamists refer to Jews as the “descendants of apes and swine,” or why Hamas says that Jews are sub-human.
What’s also pernicious about Islam is its claim to be the original faith of Adam and Abraham, and that the Jews (and Christians) perverted God’s true intentions for mankind. All the major figures in the Tanakh (e.g. Noah, David, Solomon etc) are appropriated by Islam and turned into Muslim prophets. From the very beginning, Islam was an ideology designed to delegitimize Judaism. So it is hardly surprising that Muslims today seek to delegitimize the State of Israel by claiming the land is part of the Islamic caliphate.
This habit of appropriating Jewish identity and then seeking to destroy it perhaps explains why Palestinian nationalism is so unstable. The Palestinian Arabs did not seek to establish a homeland until after the formation of the State of Israel, and even then they were more concerned with destroying the Jewish state than actually focusing on how to build their own democratic institutions.
Once it was clear that the Arab states could not defeat Israel, the Palestinians had no choice but to invent their own nationalism, which is quite obviously a parody of Zionism. Palestinian nationalism came into being because the Jews did it first.
Indeed, some Palestinians go further by claiming they are descendants of the biblical Jebusites and Canaanites. According to this narrative, the Palestinians have been occupied and usurped twice – first, by the Israelites and then by the Zionists.
But this is wishful thinking. Arabs are not indigenous to Eretz Israel. They are ethnically and culturally identical to Arabs living in Jordan, Syria, Egypt etc.
Arabs occupied Eretz Israel in the 7th century during the Muslim conquests. In contrast, Jews have lived on the land for the past 3,300 years. Jerusalem has always been considered the focus of Judaism and Jewish identity. Jerusalem has never been the capital of any Arab or Muslim entity.
Likewise, Jerusalem is mentioned at least 700 times in the Jewish scriptures. Jerusalem is not mentioned once in the Koran. It is unlikely that Muhammad ever went to Jerusalem. Moreover, Jews pray facing Jerusalem, while Muslims pray with their backsides toward Jerusalem. This is surely a tasteless caricature of Judaism.
The Palestinian desire to appropriate the land of Israel is simply the latest manifestation of the ongoing attempt to emulate Judaism by subverting and ultimately destroying Jewish identity. Therefore, it is important to keep reminding the world that the Jewish people have a much stronger claim to Judea and Samaria. There are many political and legal reasons why the State of Israel is entitled to the “West Bank.” But at the heart of the matter is the Jewish right to fulfil Israel’s destiny as keeper of the land, which was, after all, promised in the Torah.